


In Memoriam

by Morgana



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 16:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16768615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgana/pseuds/Morgana
Summary: With every death, Thor looks for a way to memorialize Loki - his brother, his love, and his life





	In Memoriam

When Loki died for the first time, Thor was lost right along with him. Death was not unknown to him - it was a familiar brother-in-arms for any warrior - but this wasn’t like any death he’d known before. It wasn’t someone whose time had come, like when his grandmother had joined his grandfather in the afterlife, and it wasn’t a glorious, bloody death on the field of battle. No, this was... senseless. Ugly. And it made him feel much the same way.

He knew his family and friends were worried about him, but all he could seem to think about was Loki. Loki’s eyes, so wide and frightened in those last moments, Loki’s face, settling into an impossible peace just seconds before he let go of the staff. The official story was that he lost his grip and fell, but Thor knew better. His brother had chosen to die, taken his own life right before his eyes. Thor _saw_ , and it haunted him.

They’d given him a funeral, of course. All the proper rites due a prince of Asgard, his grave goods carefully collected, his sjaund celebrated with stories from those that had hated and mocked and feared him while he was alive. Thor spent the night alone at the end of the Bifrost, draining one bottle of Vanir wine after another, drinking steadily as though he could somehow forget, even for just one night, that his brother was gone. He’d woken in Loki’s bed the next morning, his head aching, his stomach sour, and his heart empty.

Three months after Loki’s death, Odin commissioned a new armor for Thor. One suited to the crown prince, he declared, as though Thor wouldn’t have given both the armor and Mjolnir and everything else he possessed up if he could’ve gotten Loki back. But nobody told the Allfather no, so Thor bowed his head, went to the armorer, and tried not to remember Loki’s gleaming golden horns. _You don’t really want to start this again, do you, cow?_

He should’ve given him the fucking kiss. It really hadn’t been so very much to ask for, a kiss from the future king to his beloved brother. But Thor had worried about the servants, had been too conscious of the eyes that were soon to be on him, so he’d taken the coward’s way out. That was something Loki had never been - when he’d told Thor he loved him, every time he told Thor he loved him, he didn’t care who might overhear, who might be watching, or what anyone might think. Everyone else might believe him a heartless bastard, but Thor knew the truth: Loki had worn his heart on his sleeve, naked and visible, and entirely Thor’s.

It’s the memory of Loki’s visible care for him that leads him to change the armor. Odin’s design called for his vambraces to have Mjolnir engraved on them, that everyone might see Thor’s glory and power. He, like everyone else, was shocked when the vambraces were delivered and Loki’s horns instead gleamed out of the bright metal. But Thor hadn’t cared. Loki had worn his love for Thor where everyone could see it; Thor was determined to wear his grief and love for Loki just as openly.

************************

When Loki died for the second time, Thor’s heart had shattered into a thousand pieces. It had been so much worse than the first death, where Loki had simply slipped away from him. The second time, he’d held his brother in his arms as he drew his last shuddering breath and watched the life gurgle out of him with every pained breath. But the end result had been the same: Loki was dead, Thor was alone, and there was, once again, no body to bury or mourn over.

The funeral rites had been more restrained with his second death. They were all still mourning his mother and the others lost to the Dark Elves, but Thor had ensured that Loki was still supplied with what grave goods he could provide, although he held the sjaund in private. Like the first time, he’d spent the night drinking himself into oblivion, and once more, he’d woken in Loki’s room, hungover and heartbroken and alone.

He’d tried to remind himself of his brother’s crimes, of his madness and hatred and bitterness, all to no avail. While Thor had once said Loki was lost to him, there was a difference in knowing that his brother was kept alive in the dungeon, and knowing that his brother lay dead somewhere on Svartalfheim. A brother imprisoned could be visited, could be talked to, could even be pardoned, but a dead brother was simply... gone.

Where his friends had been sympathetic and worried before, now they were simply impatient. Thor found himself spending less time with the Sif and the Warriors Three and more time in Loki’s room and his mother’s garden. They were the only places he found real peace, the only places he could actually mourn his losses. His father seemed to feel the same, for Thor had often seen him in the garden late at night or after a council meeting. And maybe he should seek his father out, should try to share his grief with him, but every time he thought about it, Thor heard him roaring at Loki about his ‘birthright’ and saw again the stricken look on Loki’s face when he’d been told that he would spend the rest of his life in the dungeon.

Had he known that Thor had begged for his life along with their mother? Had he realized that his sentence would have been ended the second Thor ascended to the throne? Or had he believed that Thor, too, had turned his back on him? Had he taken Thor’s silence and absence for abandonment and died thinking that Thor no longer loved him?

The thought that Loki might have had cause to doubt his love was what led Thor to seek out the lover’s lock he’d once begged from his brother. It had been a rash request, one that they’d known could go nowhere, as Thor couldn’t wear Loki’s strands woven with his own openly, but after he’d spent the better part of three months asking for it, Loki had given in. When he drew the lock out, Thor remembered the way Loki had handed him the knife to cut it, how he’d instructed Thor on just where to cut so the severed length wouldn’t be noticed, and how he’d seen Loki stroke over the nape of his neck for weeks afterward.

Loki’s hair was silky, jet black, and thick, and Thor had always loved seeing it spread across his pillow, loved shoving his hand through sweat-soaked strands in the aftermath of passion, but like so many other things, he’d never thought to tell Loki about it. Once more, he was left to offer up his love and grief to the ghost that followed him through the halls of Asgard, making his commitment visible only when it was too late. But at least the lover’s lock braided in with his own hair gave him some small piece of Loki to carry forward with him. He couldn’t have his brother, but he could have this, and until he could join Loki in Valhalla, this would have to be enough.

************************

When Loki died for the third time, Thor had fully expected to die with him. There had been no time for final words, no chance to hold his brother one last time, only the terrible crack of Loki’s bones in Thanos’ grip. It had been almost a relief to crawl to him amid the purple flames, to gather him up and wait for the moment that death would take him, too. This time, at least, he wouldn’t be left behind; they would be reunited, never to be separated again.

But Fate was ever a fickle bitch, and Thor woke on a spaceship surrounded by strangers, without his brother. Once more, Loki’s body had been stolen from him, and while he would love to pretend that it might mean Loki had somehow survived, he knew better. He’d watched Thanos raise his struggling brother up, had seen the raw panic on Loki’s face, and he’d known there was no life in the limp form that he’d gathered up in those last desperate moments. No, Thanos had been right - there would be no resurrection this time.

There was no funeral for Loki, not even when his people arrived in Wakanda and a memorial was held for the other lost Asgardians. His brother’s omission from the list of their fallen had caused more than a few comments, but Thor didn’t care. He couldn’t go through it again, not with all Asgard watching him as he went through empty rituals that he knew wouldn’t offer him any comfort. So he’d presided over the public memorial, had comforted his people as best he could, then withdrawn to his quarters at the end of the night, ready to do his own mourning in private. But it seemed that tears were a release that were now to be denied, because when he sat down on his bed, all Thor could do was stare at the wall before him and wonder why he’d been condemned to live instead of being allowed to die.

He slept at some point, lay down in the bed that was far too big and cold for one man, then woke up and went about the business of living. His people needed him, the Avengers needed him, Earth needed him. Everyone needed him. It didn’t matter that he’d failed to given them the one thing that could’ve mattered, the vengeance that he’d forced himself to stay alive for. Not that it would really have helped much - killing Thanos, as satisfactory as it was going to eventually be, wouldn’t make the difference that Thor needed. It wouldn’t bring his brother back to him.

Now that Loki was dead, really and truly dead, Thor realized just how alone he was. He’d never thought about it before, but the previous deaths, the ones that hadn’t been real, had never carved out this giant, aching hole inside him. It was like some part of him had known that Loki was still there, had known that it wasn’t death, just a brief separation. But that part was gone, scooped out and left floating in space, with his brother’s broken body, and there was nothing to fill the void.

The worst part was the tears he hadn’t been able to cry. He’d expected that after the fight with Thanos, after it was all over, he’d collapse into tears and sobs, like he had with Loki’s earlier deaths. Thor had always had tears for Loki’s deaths, had always cried, whether he’d crept off to nurse his wounds alone or let the tears flow openly and unashamedly. But aside from a few scattered tears, he hadn’t cried for Loki this time. He couldn’t. The grief that gnawed at him, the gaping hole inside, it was too big for tears to ever fill it or do anything for it. But he knew that his people had noticed, and he hoped they didn’t think his dry eyes meant his heart was even remotely close to whole.

The days dragged on, churning into weeks and months that would link up to form years, then decades and centuries, all of them without Loki. Without laughter or a sly, baiting tongue or nimble fingers or a slim body to press up against his in the dark. Thor didn’t look in mirrors anymore, not when they’d failed too often to show him Loki standing behind him, waiting for something to be thrown at his head. He didn’t read books, as they’d failed to turn up any hope for retrieving his brother, and he didn’t bother with music, because it was never going to either express his pain or ease his grief. There was nothing he could turn to for comfort, no memento he could craft, no way to truly express what Loki had meant to him.

It wasn’t until Loki had been gone for a year that Thor finally stumbled on the answer. Instead of Loki’s insignia on his armor, Thor found the traces of his prowess in the scars that littered his body, the places where Loki’s knife had found its mark. Instead of a lover’s lock, Thor had only to look at his hands to remember that _he_ was one of the last things Loki had touched. He could lick his lips and taste the last desperate kiss Loki had pulled him in for before Thanos’ ship descended. It was a small thing, and it offered no solace, but the truth of the matter was simple and undeniable.

Thor was the only memorial his brother would ever truly have. WIth that in mind, he set about doing the only thing he could, the thing his family did best: rewriting the history of Asgard and his family to reflect the world that should have been, the brother he could have been, and the king he would have been, had he had Loki by his side.


End file.
